The Internet has failed me.

One day my Bluetooth headphones started refusing to connect to my PC. “Easy enough” I thought, yet after an hour of trying to fix my Bluetooth and searching online for whatever I was missing, I started to realize that the Internet wasn’t going to be of much help - most resources I found just kept repeating the same points over and over again.

The only actual source of new ideas or information was, as always, Reddit. Apparently adding Reddit to your search terms on Google is the sure-fire way to increase the chance of finding something useful - I’m sure Reddit will find a way to monetize that.

TLDR: at the time of writing I still haven’t fixed the issue.

Later edit: issue is fixed, check the bottom of the page.

However, I have documented all of the things I have attempted, perhaps they’ll be of use to you. They’re not sorted chronologically as I attempted them, instead they’re sorted by hope - how hopeful I am that they might help someone else. Don’t worry, if I do ever figure this out, I’ll update this page, I won’t leave you hanging.

The usual suspects

I ran the Bluetooth troubleshooter and it was useless, as usual. Why every thread on Microsoft support’s website recommends running the troubleshooter is beyond me - it’s literally never helped.

I tried disabling and re-enabling the Bluetooth device in Device Manager, including removing the drivers and reinstalling them. I tried unpairing and pairing my headphones. I tried rolling back recent Windows updates, as well as restarting in safe mode.

I tested my headphones by pairing them to my phone to make sure they’re not the problem.

I made sure that my Bluetooth settings were set to Advanced (not Default) so that I’m not limited to low energy Bluetooth devices and I made sure my PC was set to discoverable.

I tried removing the antenna the motherboard came with, then re-attaching it (yeah, it handles Bluetooth and wi-fi).

I tried placing the headphones right on top of the antenna in order to eliminate interference.

I tried “power cycling” by removing the PC’s power cable and holding down the power button for a long time in order to drain the power.

I checked that the Bluetooth-related services are running, especially Bluetooth Support Service.

Going deeper with the drivers

After looking up my motherboard (Gigabyte Gaming X AX) and finding the list of drivers on their website I tried installing the newest ones, as well as the oldest ones, yet none worked.

Looking at the motherboard manual, it seems that there are three revisions of my motherboard - 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 - and the website groups drivers for all 1.x versions, however the exact hardware for the Bluetooth varies based on the revision. Looking with a flashlight I was able to locate the rev number, as described in the manual (thank God for the fad with transparent case walls in order to view your LED setup, it saved me the effort of moving the case and removing the wall).

My revision, 1.0, uses Intel for wi-fi and Bluetooth, not Realtek like 2.0 does, so I installed the newest and oldest recommended drivers on the motherboard website.

This is where I discovered the first oddity - some of the newer Intel drivers show up in the Add / Remove Software window as standalone software. Removing them from Device Manager is not enough, if you then try to install an older driver it will fail because a newer one is installed. You have to remove the Intel driver from Add / Remove Software in order for it to go away completely. Weird.

The second oddity is that Gigabyte’s driver installer fails silently if a newer one is installed. I had to unzip the installer and run WirelessSetup.exe separately in order to see the error message. Thanks Gigabyte!

I ran the setup from a CLI with /? in order to see what options I had available. I experimented with the uninstall and repair options. I outputted the logs for the installer yet everything seemed to be working as expected.

I uninstalled every single Bluetooth-related driver by going to Device Manager > View > Drivers by type and uninstalling everything I saw under Bluetooth, as well as the wi-fi driver.

Checking the hardware

I tested a separate Bluetooth dongle I had lying around yet encountered the same issue (tested with disabling the on-board Bluetooth device and without it).

I tested other headphones and a PS5 controller (they all previously worked on my PC), yet they behaved exactly like the first pair I tested.

Checking the software

I checked in C:\Windows\INF\setupapi.dev.log to see if the headphones were registering and unregistering correctly and everything seemed fine. Similarly, I couldn’t find anything helpful in the Windows Event Viewer, even after enabling Bluetooth events under Applications and Service Logs > Microsoft > Windows > Bluetooth-Policy > Operational > Enable log.

I created a USB flash drive with a bootable Linux Mint installation on it, yet I got the exact same behavior as on Windows (tested the on-board device and the dongle).

It was at this point that I discovered a new issue - the USB flash drive wasn’t being mounted correctly by Windows. The drive was being detected as physically there - it was showing up in the disk partitions tool and I was able to boot from it, but I was never able to mount it. Not sure if this is related to the Bluetooth issue, but I basically needed to use a separate machine to create the bootable Linux drive.

Since the issue happens identically on both Linux and Windows, with both the on-board Bluetooth drive and a USB dongle, I figured it must be the BIOS, since I had ruled out the hardware previously. I upgraded my BIOS to the latest version from the manufacturer’s website (it was quite outdated), yet that made no difference. I made sure to reset my BIOS settings to default after the upgrade.

Getting desperate

It was at this point, a couple of nights later, that I started losing hope.

I went over the motherboard and BIOS manuals, checking for any settings that could be in any way connected to Bluetooth (including making sure Fast Boot is turned off and that all USB-related functionality is turned on).

I ran sfc /scannow in the CLI but no issues were found.

I ran an antivirus scan using Bitdefender.

I checked my Bitdefender and Windows Firewall settings for anything that might be blocking Bluetooth traffic or connections, including inbound / outbound traffic rules for the firewall.

I used Intel’s tool for detecting outdated drivers and installing new ones.

I tried the Gigabyte Control Center for installing / updating drivers.

I learned about IRQ conflicts, then checked in Device Manager (under View > Resources By Type > Interrupts) that I didn’t have any collisions between my Bluetooth hardware and some other resource (the Bluetooth hardware wasn’t even in the list, but the wi-fi and Ethernet resources were there and didn’t appear to have any collisions).

I experimented with the only Bluetooth-related registry entries I could find under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Bluetooth, but they just controlled the Default / Advanced and Swift Pair settings from the Bluetooth settings window. I reviewed the settings under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Bth* but nothing stood out as incorrect.

Checked that Bluetooth is not disabled via the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > no option for Bluetooth, though to be honest I explored all of the folders looking for anything Bluetooth-related).

I tried running the Bluetooth Test Platform from Microsoft, yet couldn’t set things up to successfully run any of the tests. This might be an avenue for further exploration, but decided not to pursue it further at the moment, since you seem to need some dedicated hardware for the tests (a Traduci board).

In my desperation I even asked ChatGPT for help. It actually gave me a surprisingly-long list of things to try, including the IRQ conflicts I mentioned above. Some of them seemed like AI hallucinations, but I appreciate the help nonetheless. I too was close to hallucinating - or at least a nervous breakdown.

The final stage of grief - acceptance

So this is it. I’m out of ideas for now and working on this part time.

I haven’t tried a fresh install of Windows and I don’t think I will - the fact that the issue is present on both Windows and Linux Mint made me decide not to deal with the hassle of a Windows reinstall, since I don’t see any chance of that helping.

Right now my hunch is that this is a hardware issue, not a software issue, though I’m stumped on what to try next - and I would have expected that using the Bluetooth dongle in Linux would have bypassed the hardware issue.

Good luck! Maybe something in this article will help you out. If it doesn’t, know that I feel your pain.

Later edit

I initially wrote this back in November 2024 and it’s now May 2025 - and the issue is solved! I don’t know for 100% what did it, but there are two options.

Soon after the Bluetooth issue manifested, I noticed many (but not all) of my USB peripherals stopped working - XBOX and PS5 controllers stopped working, USB memory drives wouldn’t work, but a keyboard and mouse (using a USB dongle) did work. Pretty annoying.

At the same time (and for a while in fact) my CPU, an Intel i9 13900K, was growing increasingly unstable due to a known issue with 13th and 14th gen CPUs, despite the fact that the BIOS and CPU microcode was up to date. I was dealing with pretty frequent BSODs and my hunch is that even though the CPU was no longer degrading (thanks to the software updates), the frequent BSODs were slowly breaking more and more files.

Eventually something broke sufficiently so that I could no longer boot Windows. Any attempts to fix it failed and I was unable to reinstall Windows because - you guessed it - I would get BSODs while trying to.

That led to me doing a RMA for the CPU and getting a brand new i9 14900K for the same money (an upgrade, yay). After reinstalling Windows I checked that I was on the latest BIOS and CPU microcode (12B) and - surprise, surprise - Bluetooth and USB functionality is completely restored and the BSODs are done.

Was it the Windows fresh install or the CPU replacement that fixed it?

My guess is that it’s the CPU, based on a variety of reasons (such as the fact that the issue was also present in Mint, not just in Windows, or the fact that I’ve since found talk online about the instability issue leading to PCIE issues or USB over-voltage, based on some user reports). Time will tell if the CPU software patches actually solve the instability issues long term or if my brand new CPU will also fry. I hope not to have to deal with another RMA and at the very least I’ll certainly stay away from Intel for my next build.

Also, taking down a Noctua CPU cooler was a pain due to the size of the GPU. Do GPUs have to be so massive these days? Sigh.